Table reads

“Sleeping with the Dead” by Dagny Looper for The Black List cast by Wendy Kurtzman CSA and Linda Berger CSA

“Variations on Love and Madness” by Kenneth Kokin, casted by Lisa Zambetti CSA

Kenneth Kokin, Perfect World Pictures

Shaan has set up an important institution fueled with unyielding passion. As an executive, writer, director, and producer I found the Storytellers Conservatory to be a beneficial experience. He was the first to have a reading of my new script, Variations on Love and Madness, which explores the hardships and celebrity of the greatest musicians of the Romantic Period. The casting was superb, and their performances made the experience invigorating for me. If any writer is fortunate enough to be selected for a reading, it will be an incredible experience.

Filmmaking is a collaborative medium, so it is best to have great minds provide feedback as well as present the best interpretations of the words in the screenplay. The team is sensitive to all the artistry and performed the work with joy and admiration. The reading helped shaped my screenplay for the better. Second to having a great creative experience I was able to meet talented actors to collaborate and work with in the future.

— Kenneth Kokin

Creative Collaboration

In the fall of 2017, I noticed that there weren’t many collaborative projects that connected professional actors, writers, directors, story creatives, and producers, especially amongst the unions. Table Reads are an obvious way to bring all these artists together to celebrate film and TV storytelling through writing and acting.

A little over a year later, my team of volunteers and I have produced close to 20 reads, featuring over 250 amazing writers and actors. And we're just getting started.

The structure is simple. These are private reads, where only guests of the writer are allowed. After introductions, the reading takes place, followed by a discussion led by the writer. The entire experience takes about 3 hours start to finish. We host these reads at the American Film Institute, the Writers Guild Foundation Library, and Culver City Casting Studios.

Beginning with professional writers groups and production companies including The Black List and Scenario, and followed by the launch of a submission process within the Writers Guild of America (WGA) thanks to, and managed by, members JS Mayank and Steve Chivers, we source incredible material from the creators of world-class content to feature in these reads.

As these relationships formed, we were lucky to get casting support from casting directors Cori-Anne Greenhouse and members of the Casting Society of America (CSA), including Wendy Kurtzman, Linda Berger, Lisa Zambetti, Becky Silverman, Helen Geier, and Kendra Shay Clark.

In addition to working with amazing artists and organizations, we strive to make these readings an experience that the participants will never forget, pulling from the writing to create decor, ambiance, and atmosphere that immerses us in the world of the story.

As actors, these readings are our gift to our writing partners in filmmaking. Writers work so hard for months or years to conceptualize a story and write a script, and if they’re lucky, it's sold, at which point their role in the filmmaking process is often over and their story may never be produced, and if it does, it may be substantially changed for and during production and post. Great table reads are the purest experience of what they wrote and envisioned.

Writers interested in having their works read, and actors interested in participating, can email me here. Writers, please send a logline and draft of the script. Actors, please send headshots, resumes, and links to reels or self taped auditions.